Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Staunton, November 24 – In the
overwhelming majority of cases, those Russians charged with non-violent
extremist crimes like posting on the Internet or being members of organizations
deemed extremist are not sentenced to jail but rather given suspended
sentences, fines, or corrective labor, SOVA Center’s Aleksandr Verkhovsky says.

The relatively small share who are
sent to prison or the camps are either those who have posted many articles, are
linked to other crimes, or already are incarcerated. This last group includes
those who have been convicted and are behind bars but nonetheless continue to
post things on line (bbc.com/russian/russia/2015/11/151123_russia_extremism_sentence).

And the specialist on human rights
says that this pattern is “good” because “expressions should be punished by the
deprivation of freedom only in certain extreme cases.”

But since the start of 2015, he
says, there has been a disturbing development: after remaining relatively
stable the last several years, the number of people in prison or the camps for
non-violent extremist offenses such as posting articles or joining banned
groups has “approximately doubled.”

Verkhovsky says that he cannot say
what this is connected with, but Soviet history suggests at least three
possibilities, all of which are disturbing.

First, this upsurge may represent an
effort by investigators, prosecutors and the courts to compile conviction and
sentencing statistics that will put them in good stead with their political
bosses.

Second, it may represent a decision
by the political authorities to spread fear in the population that even if
Russians do not commit an act of violence, they can face prison or the camps, a
fear that will certainly restrain many from any actions of dissent.

Or third, and most ominously, it may
be an indication that investigators, prosecutors and the courts, while acting
in the general direction that the Kremlin wants, are acting in ways that go
beyond what the center wanted, in much the same way that Victor Serge described
in “The Case of Comrade Tulayev.”

If this upsurge in the number of
people imprisoned is the result of the first, that means that officials are
content to boost their statistics by the easy means of going online rather than
by the more difficult ones involving real investigations into genuine
extremism.

If it is the result of a decision by
the Kremlin itself to spread fear, that suggests that either the central
authorities are more worried than many now think or that they may be prepared
to crack down even further in the coming weeks and months.

And if it is the third, then that
suggests not only that the power vertical is anything but a tightly run
organization but also that the Kremlin may soon announce show trials of some
officials to try to convince Russians and the West that it is in fact better
than a reasonable reading of these figures would suggest.